Songs of Thalassa

by Brian Tissot

  Milo shook her head. “If the tides get any higher, it will overtop the island, and we’re screwed. We need to go at the first opportunity.”

  “I hate to say it,” Sage chimed in, “but I think Milo’s right. If we stay here, we’re swimming with the pika. How long do you think we’d last then?” Despite their apprehension, they all nodded in glum silence.

  At the dawn of the next morning, as low tide approached and the inland sea began to drop away, the rain slacked, and they could see the mainland through the mists. With great trepidation, they watched as the tide kept dropping until the seafloor emerged between the island and the continent. Minutes later, the way across was clear and free of water.

  Milo rallied the crew. “Let’s hit it.” They ran down the steep rocky slope and out into the mud flat. Georgia helped Dina limp along, while Sage carried her surfboard. “Just in case,” she said.

  As they started moving across the channel, the black rain returned and blocked their view to the other side as small meteorites began dropping down around them. “Watch out and keep moving!” Milo yelled. Sage thought she caught Moshe, who was carrying all of Milo’s gear, roll his eyes.

  As the team scrambled across the slick muddy channel bottom, Sage was terrified at the thought of getting caught by the returning tide. Then she heard water in the mists as her heart beat wildly. This is crazy!

  Chapter 23.

  Cauldron

  As Sage ran across the channel, the black rain combined with the sounds of water in the mist-shrouded distance created a spooky overture. The channel’s exposed seafloor was flat and sandy, and it was easy to move across, but as they got closer to the other side, the bottom became muddy, undulating with large mounds and water-filled pools, forcing everyone to go around large areas of the bay and slowing the team’s progress. They also had to navigate around smoking meteorites, which littered the bottom and fell around them at irregular intervals, thumping deep into the wet mud like the kick of a bass drum. Sage began to tire from the arduous and stressful journey and the consequences of being bottled up in a cave for the last few weeks. She heard Dina hiss in pain as she and Georgia limped behind the group, working twice as hard to keep up.

  As they approached the other side, the showers stopped and the clouds cleared, which buoyed her spirits, although meteorites continued their patter. Watching the tides, Sage dropped behind Dina and Georgia and was bringing up the rear with a surfboard tucked under her arm. When a brown wave of water emerged from the mists, moving toward them from both sides and narrowing their passage, she shouted an alarm: “Get moving! The tide is returning, big time.”

  “Let’s go!” shouted Milo, far in the lead. Despite their fatigue and Dina’s obvious pain, everyone picked up their pace.

  Sage noticed that even Moshe was having a difficult time keeping up with Milo. A small meteorite struck Moshe’s head, and he stumbled, then fell into a muddy dip in a shallow pool of water. Sage ran over to help while yelling, “Milo, hold up!” But Milo continued to run full speed toward the other side without looking back. Damn it! I bet he would leave us all here to die if it meant saving his sorry ass.

  Dina and Georgia came over to help Sage pull Moshe out of the muck. Sage glanced at the approaching water. “You have to get out of here. Now! Georgia, go! I’ll get him to the cliff.”

  Moshe was breathing hard and firmly stuck in thick mud up to his thighs. The harder Sage tugged, the more he sunk back into the mud. Thinking fast, she threw the board next to him and said, “Hold on, and I’ll pull you out.”

  She pulled hard while Moshe held onto the board, his head bleeding, and he slowly emerged from the viscous mud. They both lay down on the surfboard, exhausted. She sighed in relief as Georgia and Dina scaled the rocky shore. Milo stood higher on the shoreline, watching Moshe and her from a safe distance.

  Like a slow-moving disaster movie, the water came rushing in from both sides as Sage and Moshe limped across the mud in what seemed like a macabre three-legged race. Miraculously, they reached the base of the cliff just as the wall of reddish-brown water splashed their feet. Dina and Georgia started pulling Moshe up to the slope, and Sage dropped Dina’s board to help shove him from below.

  As Moshe collapsed on the cliff top, the brown sea crashed into Sage from both sides, catching her off guard so she lost her footing. Water poured in, and she disappeared beneath the chocolate-brown murk, which rose toward the top of the cliff. For a few seconds, everyone was silent as they watched Dina’s red surfboard floating on the wild sea. But as the water surged back out of the bay, Sage emerged from the murk, hanging on to rocks on the cliff face. Georgia scrambled down to pull her up before the next surge of water, and a few seconds later she was standing next to her, caked with mud and with a big smile on her face.

  “What a ride!” Sage said. Georgia laughed and hugged her.

  After stumbling a few times, Moshe got to his feet, and Milo ran down to embrace him, his eyes on the inland sea. “Glad you made it.”

  Roughly pushing Milo away, Moshe reached up to touch the wound on his head, then looked at the blood on his hands. “Yeah, no help from you.”

  Milo looked toward the surging bay as the rain returned and hot rocks continued to fall from the sky. “Look, we can’t stay here. We need to get to high ground, into a cave or something, or we’ll all die.”

  Without delay, they clambered up the muddy slope to higher ground as the tide surged in behind them. Moshe climbed with Sage and said, “Thank you. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  Sage shrugged it off. “No problem. Anyone would have done it.” Moshe shot a bitter smile at Milo.

  After a few arduous minutes, they reached a sandy beach, which appeared to be the normal pre-tide fall shoreline. The beach ran for miles in both directions, cut by a raging green river that pulsed down the valley and ended in an enormous waterfall plummeting to the ocean below, which was surging toward them as the tide returned. As Sage rested, Georgia pointed to movement in the ground amid the ubiquitous lichen spores and spiky slugs.

  A hand-sized crab-like creature popped out of the mud and bounced around. Sage trapped one under her foot and took a close look. Superficially, it looked like a pill bug: it was segmented, had two eye spots, four tiny claws near the mouth, and a pair of antennae up front and twin spikes for a tail. However, unlike a pill bug, the short leaf-like lobes sticking out of each segment moved at once. She let it go, and the creature used the spikes to anchor in the mud, contracted its muscles, then jumped through the air a few feet away. After landing, it powered through the mud with its lobes after the slugs, gobbled one down, then jumped again.

  “They’re like a primitive arthropod or something,” Sage said. “Maybe a phyllopod.” She watched in fascination as the creatures began emerging everywhere, grabbing slugs with their mouth claws, and shredding them into small pieces before eating them, deftly avoiding the spines. “They’re ravenous! It’s like they haven’t eaten in years.”

  “Clearly,” Georgia said, shaking her head. “I don’t like the look of this.”

  Sage was awestruck thinking about the biology unfolding before her “These slugs and bugs—let’s call them that for now—are like periodic cicadas on Earth. Cicadas emerge from the ground as adults, but only every 13 to 17 years, in an exploding frenzy of feeding and mating. On this planet, I’m guessing it’s an adaptation to the rain cycles tied to Hina’s orbit. They burrow in the ground and wait for the rain to trigger the lichens, then the slugs emerge, then these critters jump out and have a feast. Fascinating! And the rain and cloud cover protects them from the high UV. These are the ancestors of the future terrestrial creatures of Thalassa!”

  Milo gave Sage a stony look. “Thanks for the science lesson,” he said sarcastically, “but why in the world would they all come out at once like this? Why not during the night or the occasional rainstorm?”

  “If they’re l
ike cicadas, they’re doing it to swamp predators with high numbers so some of them can reproduce before being eaten.”

  “Eaten by whom?” asked Milo.

  Sage shrugged. “The lichen-slug-bug life cycle may be the whole food chain for all we know. Or we may be missing something, something big enough to eat these guys.” Her heart skipped a beat. “It could be that horrible creature in the video or something else we don’t even know about.”

  Sage saw Milo’s face tighten at the mention of the creature while he grabbed his hands to stop them from shaking. “That’s just fucking fantastic.” She could see his eyes darting around and he was taking in deep breaths trying to calm himself, clearly stressed out by the situation.

  Moshe noticed it too, “To be safe we should stay away from—”

  But Milo cut him off with a shake of his head. “Let’s not think about that right now.”

  Whistling and wailing noises pierced the air, and Georgia looked down over the edge of the shore at the churning sea below. “Hey, Sage, look! Your seal friends are following us.”

  “They’re not seals, Georgia,” Sage said as she ran over. Sure enough, there was Melia, Two-Spot, and several of her older sisters rolling around on the surface of the rapidly filling bay below them, looking agitated. When they saw Sage, Melia’s wailing stopped, and she called Sage with her whistle sounds and motioned toward the water. Why do they want me to go with them? We’re safe here. How much worse can it get?

  “Dang,” Sage exclaimed. “I had hoped they’d just stayed safe in their cave instead of following me.” Then she yelled at them while pointing at the islands in the distance. “Go home, Melia! I’m fine. Go back to your home cave!”

  Milo raised his eyebrows and a slow smile spread on his face as Sage interacted with Melia. “What cave is that?” Milo asked, with a steely edge to his voice.

  “Oh, it’s so cool. They hang out in underwater caves on their home island. It’s deep and safe from these crazy tides.”

  “Ah.” Milo nodded, leaning in too close. “That’s interesting. They must be really smart.”

  Sage looked suspiciously at Milo. He seemed genuinely interested, like they were talking about a new motoboard or the latest Lycra suit, and she couldn’t understand why his attitude changed all the sudden. “Yes, very smart,” she agreed tentatively. “More than you can imagine, and they sing the most beautiful songs.” She began to elaborate, but something in Milo’s look forced her to stop. Milo glanced at Moshe, who had been listening, and gave him a quick nod.

  A few minutes later, as they shuffled up the ridge, Milo pulled Moshe over to the side and whispered into his ear. She overheard one word: “…seals…” Moshe nodded, his face showing no expression. Sage was puzzled at their exchange and felt a chill run up her spine. Her distrust of Milo jumped a notch, and she vowed to keep a closer eye on him.

  Chapter 24.

  River

  With Milo in the lead, the group slowly worked their way up the slick hillside covered with rivulets and streams crisscrossing the red-brown mud and black ash. To Sage, it felt like they were traversing a bleeding, scorched landscape, which was decidedly more complex than their lander flyover revealed. Earthquakes shook the ground every few hours, reminding them of the ongoing eruptions. Although cloud cover blocked their view of the volcanoes, they saw the fuzzy orange glow of lava through the mists. Sage chuckled at Georgia’s enthusiasm for the dynamic geology. Despite the pouring rain, she was running around picking up rocks, peering into caves, and digging in the mud.

  Georgia’s curiosity piqued Sage’s interest in the landscape. “What is this, Georgia? It’s volcanic but nothing like what I’ve seen in Hawaii.”

  “You’re just used to the Big Island,” she replied, “which is a giant shield volcano built from mafic basalts. These are a mix of mafic and felsic flows.”

  Sage shook her head. “What?”

  “The volcanoes here alternate between the fluid magmas you have in Hawaii—you know, pahoehoe—and thicker magmas that erupt more explosively with lots of ash, more like Mount St. Helens.”

  Sage nodded. “OK, I get it. The eruptions are more complex here.”

  Georgia pointed to a vertical cliff cut by the raging river. “You can see the stratigraphy in these valleys. The layers of dark fluid volcanic basalts alternate with thick layers of pyroclastic rock made of older pieces of sedimentary and metamorphic rock, bound in tuft deposits. Basalts erode at a different rate than tufts, creating a complex landscape. That’s why there are all these arches, towers, hanging cliffs, and mushroom-shaped rocks. Many of these are remnants of old lava tubes. It’s a geologist’s playground!”

  Milo kicked a rock into the distance. “Looks more like a nightmare to me.”

  Georgia ignored him and pointed up to the valley walls. “Have you’ve noticed the walls of these canyons are honeycombed with caves, with lava tubes? I’m sure we can find a good place to camp, but we need to be careful as some are still active.”

  “I thought we were 30 miles from the volcanoes,” said Milo.

  Georgia sighed. “Yes, but lava flows, especially pyroclastic flows, can run hundreds of miles from their sources, moving rapidly down steep valleys and through lava tubes. Some lava tubes on Mars are over 500 feet wide!”

  She pointed to smoke pouring out of a cave up the valley. “See that cave? It’ probably still connected to a magma source. We’re walking on a highly dynamic and unstable landscape, and we should be careful.” She pointed up the mountain. “There is lava flowing down some of these valleys. Since we can see it through the mist, it’s probably only 15 to 20 miles away.”

  “Right,” replied Sage. “I remember stories about hikers on the Big Island that broke through the roof of an old lava tube and disappeared. Their bones were discovered many years later.”

  “Terrific,” said Milo, coming to an abrupt stop. “Georgia, why don’t you take the lead here, and I’ll follow you.”

  Georgia laughed and forged up the valley, carefully picking her way through the convoluted landscape pounded by rain and an occasional earthquake, with the slugs and bugs jumping around them.

  After an hour of slow, strenuous hiking they stopped and rested under a rock overhang above the river. Georgia looked on approvingly. “We should be high enough. We’ve got red lichens, so we’re past the color change and should be beyond the highest tide.”

  “Agreed,” said Milo, scraping mud off his clothes. “Maybe we’re near the Proteus. Judging by what we saw in the video, they may have landed and set base somewhere in this valley. It looks familiar.”

  Sage scanned the landscape. “I don’t recognize any of this from the video.”

  “Well, we may have passed it,” he said with a sneer. “I can’t do everything.”

  “I guess the ship was closer to the high-tide mark,” Georgia said.

  Milo was growing impatient and starting to shake. “It’s getting late. Since the tides are growing, let’s take a quick look around for any ruins before we camp for the night.”

  Georgia agreed. “Let’s break into teams and search the valley both ways.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Milo replied. “Moshe and I will move up the valley, while the three of you work your way down.” As he spoke, they could hear the sea moving along the valley below them. “And watch the tide.”

  “But Dina can barely walk!” Sage protested, irritated that he gave them the more dangerous route. Milo ignored her and continued on his way.

  Georgia and Dina headed down the valley, and she joined them in looking for signs of the Proteus. As she walked, she thought about her father’s death. Now, faced with the real possibility of reliving his fate, she trembled with fear. Thoughts of his strong, warm presence and loving spirit filled her mind, and she began to cry in the rain. Damn it! This place sucks. Why did you want to come here? An answer emerged in her father’s vo
ice from one of the lectures she had watched: We need to push the envelope of humanity into space. We need to find what’s out there. I refuse to believe we are alone in the universe.

  Slipping in the mud, she refocused on walking carefully down the slope. But with the heavy rain and creatures bouncing around everywhere, it was difficult to see the ground, let alone any possible debris. Progress was slow as they moved down the valley, scanning the area while keeping their distance from the muddy river. After an hour of intensive searching, Dina and Georgia were restless, cold, and ready to head back, but Sage’s growing interest in discovering the ship kept them going. The longing to go home was growing in her mind, and she was ready to leave the planet. Time for the big broadcast!

  Scanning the valley below from a high ridge, she looked for an area similar to the video. The ship was big, she reasoned, so they must have chosen a flat area near the river. She saw a likely spot off to one side. On closer inspection, she made out several round bumps on the coastal plain; one looked suspiciously symmetrical. She walked over to join Dina, who was sitting near the river and surrounded by jumping bugs, to reveal her discovery.

  Georgia called over to them, “Hey guys, get away from the river. We have to be careful not to get too—Aaah!” Her words were cut short by a scream. “Sage, look out! Behind you!”

  Sage turned and saw a massive head with twitching antennae emerging onto the muddy river bank behind them. Dina pushed Sage out of the way as the creature lunged toward her, then she tried to run but her ankle gave way, and the creature grabbed Dina’s leg with its appendages, knocking her to the ground. As the creature fully emerged from the river, it straddled Dina with two jointed legs projecting from each side while a long tail, which looked more like a tentacle with suckers, reached over to grab her legs and pinned her to the ground.

  Sage screamed and began pulling on Dina’s arms while Georgia ran over and hit the creature with her fists. Dina began to scream as the creature’s appendages began ravenously tearing bloody flesh off her legs and shoving the pieces into its gaping maw.